


Fairy Gold

by Morbane



Category: Rich in Love - Colin Linden (Song)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 06:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14827014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: Transient riches.





	Fairy Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minutia_R](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/gifts).



Once there was a young man who had the luck of the fairies, or so it was said: whether he strolled in sunlight through broad meadows or strode at midnight under storm-tossed branches, it was all the same to him, and harm never came his way. He was carefree with his money, yet never seemed to go hungry; he would give you the shirt off his back, but no one could name a time when he had himself been in need.

As one might, he came to hear of his own reputation, and it pleased him. For though there was nothing in this world he lacked for, there were many things in worlds beyond that called to him.

And, which did credit to his discretion (or might have, had anyone known) his adventures were far more and merrier than what was heard and told; for he had danced in fairy circles and aided fairy queens and knights, and all without falling into the spell of endless grief for Faery, or losing himself in greed for fairy garlands and fairy gold.

And perhaps it is good that his adventures were never told in full, for certainly they were too many to tell, even though they had an end. They ended in one of the oldest ways - with a ring of bells - church bells, not Faery, and not funeral bells either.

And the young man and his wife were very happy together, but he went adventuring no more.

And that is a kind end, perhaps, but it is not true.

* * *

In the realm beyond her name was Adrevarias; as his wife she was Devy, or Ethan's Devy, or Ethan's sweet Devy, for she was cheerful and mild and well-liked, despite her strange ways.

It was a long, long time before he learned to prepare for her food that she would eat, or she him. As many fairy folk do, she abhorred food cooked in the fire and ate both meat and grains as the earth delivered them. The fairy folk warm themselves with powerful wines and spices that may be cold to touch the skin, but hot when they kiss the tongue and throat. After a long, long while, they came to dine together on soup; before that compromise, laughing and wincing, they sometimes fed each other morsels from their hands, a spoon of porridge here, a flower there.

Children were never born to them, but Ethan yearned for a child, and so when flooding made an orphan of young Danny, barely a year old, Ethan and Devy raised him as their own. You would never have known from looking at him, or listening to him speak, that he was a fairy's foster-child, except sometimes by an odd spark in his eyes, like some kind of silent laughter; he never gave voice to it, and maybe never tested that he could.

And when Danny was grown and made his own way in the world, Ethan and Devy were still as tender with each other as new lovers, and perhaps one might have said that they acted younger around each other, again, now that there was no longer their son to be wise and firm in front of, and keep foolish notions away from.

Until Devy's wings withered away.

* * *

She had never lost them. They lay quiet beneath her skin. She could shake and shudder as if in a frenzy to unfurl them, or she could reach her long fingers behind her back and bend her arms in impossible ways and scratch long furrows down her back to free them - or, far more to Ethan's comfort, he could coax them free by slowly stroking down her back and body, almost to the backs of her knees, and teasing out the shapes of their whorls and ridges with the faintest pressure of his finger tips, light touch returning the essence of lightness and air.

He loved to see them. He loved to watch her fly. She could never take him with her - the wings were not that strong - but she might as well have, when she rose against the moon and dove past the trees and drew his gaze across the sky like a pen signing a name, sealing the sky with invisible words.

Though he grew lined of face and slow of step, she did not, for she was of Faery, and would be young when he was dead - when Danny was dead and Danny's child was dead - and she always had the same lightness that she had when she first came to him.

But there are other things than feathers that are light, and there came a time when Ethan drew his hand across Devy's back and the feathers came up brittle, bitter-scented, in appearance like autumn leaves and fragile with the same threat of breaking and falling away.

"Adrevarias," he said (for he never forgot her true name), "what is wrong?"

She was silent.

"Devy," he said. "I am afraid I have hurt you. Do you know what has happened? Can we make this right?"

Still she said nothing, and he drew his hand away. He sensed that she wished to be alone, but he was stubborn; without a word from her, he would not go.

At last she said, "I wish you had not used my true name when you asked me that, or had been more careful in what you asked, for I am bound to answer you. Just so was I bound to love you, many years ago."

Bound to love, she said, but bound to court, to charm, and to serve, was truer: for as she told him now, she had never loved him.

The fairy folk loathe debt above all other horror. Ethan, who in his cleverness accepted no fairy favour or reward when he met them in adventure, frightened them; and when one queen had chanced to hear him voice a careless wish - to himself, or so he had thought - that he might win the eye and heart of a fairy maiden, she had seized upon this as an opportunity.

She had told Ethan that among her court was one who loved him, and she had told Adrevarias to play that part, and play it well, while Ethan lived until he died, and then she might return to her kin.

Thus she had counted him paid, and the debt settled.

Ethan listened in silence, looking on his wife, Devy, beloved; Adrevarias, of Faery, a stranger to him. And it was quiet enough in that room to hear the sound of two hearts breaking; and yet there was not a sound to be heard, for only one broke then.

"Why have your wings withered, Adrevarias?" Ethan asked her, cruel in his hurt.

"I disobeyed her," answered his wife, who was not his, and he did not have the stomach to question her further, or ask by what act or sign she had failed at her task.

He had loved her, and what he had loved was gone and had never been.

Human love is strange and cruel, stubborn and faithless and faithful.

"She gave you my love to pay her debt," he said slowly.

"Yes."

"Then she played me false, and the debt is not paid," said Ethan.

She watched him warily.

"I will go to her," said Ethan, made wild with pride and grief as he never was in his youth, "to her very throne," - he who had never been such a fool as to enter Faery - "and make my complaint. I will ask for my debt to be settled, and for my price I will ask for your wings, as they were."

"She will be wroth," said Adrevarias, "that you challenge her, but the wings will be nothing to her; you might ask for youth as well and be granted it."

"The wings are not for me," Ethan cried. "I would you flew again, if you must fly from me."

She did not answer immediately.

"If it is for my sake," she said, "then desist. She will be wroth with me enough. I had rather go without my wings than go without my home."

"I had rather you had both," he said, "than that living with me lost you those." And he turned from her.

* * *

In the morning he packed his bags without looking with her, and she watched him move, and considered his reach and his frame and his wits as they compared to those of the man she had married, and considered his chances in Faery, he who had been called so lucky in his youth; and when she thought of his failure only bitterness came to her, and when she thought of his success it was little better.

He looked at her when he stood at the threshold.

"Farewell," he said, without anger.

"Stop," she said.

And in obedience, here is the end to this story, and the listener must determine whether it be kind or cruel or true. Ethan did not venture forth to Faery. He never saw Adrevarias fly again, and Danny never saw his mother again at all; perhaps she is in Faery now, but no mortal can safely say.

It is the end of the story, but not the end of all things, and perhaps yet there may be healing.


End file.
